Washington, D.C. InDesign User GroupMeeting Notes Archive
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
The cold weather hitting the east coast made the piping hot pizza a welcome addition to the snacks served during the social get-together that preceded our meeting. Several people attending for the first time were pleased to find old friends amongst the regulars. After we finished our cookies and brownies, we descended into the state-of-the-art U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation auditorium.
The lead-off presentation on InCopy CS was made by Noha Edell of Adobe Systems. InCopy CS is a professional writing and editing program designed for use by editorial groups. It is tightly integrated with and shares many features of InDesign CS. InCopy uses the same composition engine as InDesign so that copyfitting is identical to that of the InDesign pages. Noha’s demonstration showed how editorial staff members could “check out” articles for editing without affecting the graphic elements of the layout. Only the text is affected. Noha showed how notes could be passed back and forth between the design and editorial staff. This system seems designed for larger editorial departments though it could be used by just a few people.
After Noha finished, Ken Chaletzky of Copy General did a brief presentation on the uses of nested styles. He said, “Nested styles alone is enough reason to upgrade to InDesign CS.” Then he proceeded to show how a complex magazine table of contents comprised of several type sizes, styles and colors could be effected with a single paragraph style tag. Prior to nested styles, each section of text would have to have been “selected” and then had a character style applied. What would have taken many minutes was reduced to seconds. A second example was the introductory paragraph to a book chapter. A drop cap, with its position altered from the standard one, followed by a few words in small caps was again accomplished with a single paragraph style. Ken provided each attendee with printed samples of both along with screen shots showing the important steps.
Before the closing activities, we had a question and answer session for the most part based on written questions provided before the meeting started. There were questions on placing graphics, handling unusual drop caps, automating crop marks and vertical justification. Some were addressed on the spot, while others were taken back by Noha for “further research.”
The meeting ended on a high note with the drawing for many door prizes including copies of InDesign CS and InCopy CS. Some winners received a first aid kit or Wizards Basketball tickets courtesy of MacMedics. Many others received t-shirts, books, training DVDs and more.
On the meeting review sheets people were asked about other possible meeting sites, but it was clear from a show of hands that the present site is preferred. The written votes showed more than 60% rated the current site as their #1 choice, We will make every effort to keep the meeting where it is. As for a preference of meeting day, Tuesday was the clear winner with, again, more than 60% preferring that date. Monday, Thursday and “no preference” tied for second at 8.5%.
We’re working on our next meeting. If you’ve done something special with InDesign that you’d like to share with the group, or if you have suggestions for meeting topics, please forward them to the chapter representative.
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